Meet Mark

Let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Sisson. I’m 63 years young. I live and work in Malibu, California. In a past life I was a professional marathoner and triathlete. Now my life goal is to help 100 million people get healthy. I started this blog in 2006 to empower people to take full responsibility for their own health and enjoyment of life by investigating, discussing, and critically rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true about health and wellness...

Perspective and Priorities

When it comes to water, we really need more options. It’s not enough that we have potable, low-cost drinking water at our convenient disposal. We still can’t seem to appreciate it, let alone drink it. That’s why there’s PUR Flavor Options. With the press of a button, delicious, sugar-free raspberry, peach or strawberry water is yours! Why, how delightful! A flavor cartridge is only 10 dollars and fits conveniently into your existing PUR filtration system. You can enjoy as many as 75 glasses of flavored water. Buy all three for only 30 dollars and enjoy hundreds of glasses of flavored water all month long! Just think how much more water your family will drink now that it’s not boring anymore. Think of the monotonous, life-sucking agony you will avert when you no longer have to drink virtually free, pure, clean water.

You know what else only costs 30 dollars?

Saving the life of an actual child.

One-fifth of the world’s population does not have access to drinkable water.

4,500 children die every day from lack of drinkable water. And over 2 million people die every year because of poor quality water or dehydration. Every seven minutes, a child dies from dehydration.

Here are some water facts. Here are some more. It breaks my heart that we have such a bloated sense of ennui we actually think we deserve things like PUR flavored water. Sure, it’s not “our fault” that pain and suffering exist. And we all need enjoyment and variety. I guess.

But we don’t need bottled water in this country. We don’t really even need filtered water, let alone flavored filtered water. And we don’t need to spend 2 bucks a pop on Ethos Water to help dying children – we need to drink from the tap and send that 2 bucks to Africa. I’m sure the Ethos people are nice and I bet they really enjoy their private jets and yachts, which is wonderful, but we can all do a lot better. We could use a little horrifying.

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phil

10 years 25 days ago

The lack of drinkable water for all people is entirely unacceptable given the advancement of mass communications of today. But, I guess we here in America have become willfully ignorant/ gotten used to spending 8 times more on defense than the runner up on weapons spending. Imagine the good that could be done if we took a piece of that money and spent on food and water for the world. We could feed and cloth this world, not one child truly, left behind.

It really saddens me to see what we prioritize. Even a fraction of what we spend on weapons we’ll never use could educate, feed and clothe not only children abroad, but the millions of American children who have no adequate nutrition, health care, lack access to better schools, college, etc. Sorry to be a big bleeding heart liberal about this, but it’s totally unacceptable what we choose to spend our money on. I know we have to defend ourselves, of course, but the military waste is ridiculous and well-documented (though of course military pay manages to be nice and low).

I think the more we look the more we are going to find these sorts of comparisons. It’s unfortunate that we need to be shocked to act – and even then, we still don’t always act.

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Brian

10 years 24 days ago

We (Americans) need to wake up. Places like Starbuck’s try and convince us we are saving the world by drinking $1.80 water that costs them $.30 to make -that includes the $.05 to charity… Celebrities tell us that we need to save the planet while they run around in jets…I can go on and on, but the bottom line is we are turning into a society of fat, lazy decadents who will care for there poor and helpless only enough to make themselves not feel guilty…which for some is not at all.

Have you all seen the ethos water scam mock website? Apparently the CEO and founders have made a fortune off this bottled water that is a) not even anything more than filtered tap water b) bad for the environment to produce and ship and c) very little of the revenues actually go to the kids. We’d be better off sending the ethos water to the kids, not buying it. (BTW What up Brian! Thanks for the comments!)

ethos water was purchased in 2005 by Starbucks for $8 million. Last year Starbuck’s signed a distribution agreement with Pepsi to increase distribution points from 5,000 to 100,000. When Starbuck’s reaches the $10 million donation goal, they will have made $292 million, while consumers will have spent $360 million…what a racket.

As long as there is the psychological gratification, it seems we don’t genuinely care.

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wraithc88

8 years 9 months ago

Charity multplies misery. Why we should care for irresponsible Africans who breed like rabbits? We should give them back their culture and way of life so they will live the way they were intended to live.